Voluntary Motion
by mooncustafer
Summary: Doc/Jewel. When one part shifts, everything must find a new balancing point. Het, pretty vanilla except that one partner has CP and a leg brace.
1. Chapter 1

"Right - I'm out-fucking-side now, and not setting one goddamned foot further!"

Trixie could never understand why, with a stove that smoked like the devil's own arse from the miserable wood Johnny tried to feed it, Jewel should even _care_ whenever a body lit a cigarette in her kitchen; but she had shooed and blustered, a dishrag clutched in one hand, until the other woman had been forced into the doorway to the outside; where she had turned to snap:  
"I pity the man who marries you!"

"Well,_ I_ pity the man who marries _you!_" Who the fuck were they kidding, Trixie thought. They would die whores in this running sore on the face of the wilderness. The thin curl from her cigarette stung her eyes of a sudden - she must have shown it, because Jewel's face crumpled in concern and she laid a hand on her friend's arm:

"I didn't mean a thing. Sol Starr'd be a lucky man to have you. He _is_ a lucky man to have you." Blinking, Trixie smiled and chucked her under the chin.

"You're just a sentimental quiz, ain't you, when all's said and done?" Leaning against the doorpost opposite, the little cook smiled slyly, yet seemed to hesitate.

"I fancy someone, too," she said at last.

"Who? Dan?" Trixie took a draw on her cigarette and laughed smoke.

"No!"

"Al? I knew it! You were secretly burning with jealousy the whole time I was fucking him!"

"Stop teasing!" Jewel shoved her, playfully, as Trixie dropped the fag end of her cigarette and ground it out under her boot heel.

"Well? Don't leave me to expire of curiosity, you goddamn imp." Jewel leant back against the doorpost again, and folded her arms across her small bosom, or perhaps she was merely cold in the breeze from outside.

"I like the doc. What?!" she added, as Trixie raised an eyebrow but said nothing, "You were the one who said he was all right. Anyways, I like dancing with him."

"Sure, and he's the reason you can dance at all. But it's no good, trying to get a medical man to join giblets - they already know too much about it, there's no mystery for them."

"Seems to me a man who knows his way around down there might have the advantage over the average, when it comes to that."

Trixie closed her eyes and tried, but failed, to summon an image of Doc in that capacity. To be honest, her trust in the man had started with the absence in him of lust for any woman in his care -- which was to say, any female in the camp at all. Part of her wondered if he was incapable that way, not in body perhaps, but in mind. She knew a man with bad memories when she saw one, and knew when not to ask about it, too. Out loud she said,  
"You might as well fuck a clock."

"Well a clock does need to be wound up, every so often." Gimp had a comeback for everything.

"But not to be tinkered with. Clock's a reliable but frail bit of machinery, and you don't fuck with what ain't broken." As though the doctor wasn't broken. As though any of them weren't.

"You think that's what I want to do?" Jewel's feathers were getting ruffled now, her face flushing pink. "It's seldom enough I find one who suits me."

True enough. It wasn't just her leg - some men were desperate enough not to care -- hell, some liked it; but Jewel was picky, and Al, with all his faults -- well, he made it so she could afford to be. If she thought Doc was the right sort for her, she meant it. Trixie still wondered if there was a right sort for _him_, or if he was willing to let there be.

Jewel had an instinct for generosity, give her that. She could slip a choice, a little bit more, to the proudest and most stubborn spirits. Well, Doc sure fit that category. Trouble was, Trixie was fond of 'em both, and didn't want to think of the consequences to either one if Jewel made an offer only to have it rebuffed - or more likely, missed completely, for the doctor could be blind to the fucking obvious sometimes, particularly where his own interests were concerned. She sighed, and made her choice:

"Come to think of it, maybe I should just lock the two of you in a room together with nothing but a bed and let things sort themselves out." It was Jewel's turn to be soothed, and she smiled wryly.

"Let me try my own feminine wiles first."


	2. Chapter 2

_"The rationale of the occurrence of structural shortening of muscles is very simple. When, from any cause, they are thrown into a state of constant contraction, either passive (from repose of a limb in one position), or active (from spasm), they are not solely diminished in bulk, as commonly stated, from want of use, but the muscular fibres become permanently shortened and inelastic; and provided a period sufficient for the complete renewal of their integrant parts has elapsed, they are necessarily re-deposited positively shorter, to accommodate them to the altered relation of the surrounding parts...._

_Another striking circumstance which, during childhood, accelerates the progress of this disproportion between the contracted muscles and adjacent parts, arises from the relation that is known to exist between the growth and development of different parts, and their maintenance in a state of activity by a proper and constant exercise of their several functions. Whilst the muscles on one side of a limb remain contracted, and undergo interstitial shortening, in the manner I have described, the bones, gradually advancing towards their full development, are elongated, the disproportion between them and the contracted muscles is augmented, and the deformity of the limb necessarily aggravated."_

_Little, "On Ankylosis, or Stiff-Joint: A Practical Treatise on the Contractions and Deformities Resulting from Diseases of Joints."_

* * *

Doc came downstairs still in his shirtsleeves. He'd washed his hands (more than once) in the basin she'd brought up. Jewel wondered if a man could turn queer from seeing so much snatch, and in the way of it being his business, but then Doc had seen the innards of most of the men in the camp as well, which would surely put a body off cock for God's own eternity.

"You want some tea, Doc, before you go?" She considered his scrawny frame and calculated on what Al would pretend not to notice was gone. "And some toast?" He followed her into the kitchen, eyeing the tall boot she buckled everyday since he had put it on her leg.

"First I want to check how your brace is treating you. May I observe your gait?

"My gate?!" She pantomimed raising her skirt.

Embarrassed, Doc growled,"I want to see how you walk." Carefully, she stepped up and down the room a few times, as the doc stood in a corner, chin in his hand. Funny how she felt more ill at ease being looked at now than when she used to drag her leg. She hadn't felt so, that first night by the piano.

"Does the knowledge you are closely observed make you tense your muscles?" She nodded vigorously. "I shall take that into account. You ain't feeling uncomfortable otherwise? Any pains in your back?"

"A little," she admitted, "just above my arse."

"The change to your...to your walk, wrought by the brace, affects your whole posture. May I examine your spine?" Jewel put her hands against the edge of the kitchen table and turned her back to him.

"Do your worst." She wondered why she'd said it, and was sorry. It was rare enough a man touched her, much less one who meant her no harm. As he ran his hand slowly down her spine, she thought of what he'd told her once, that the spinal cord was like a telegraph wire between the brain and the body; and wondered if he could feel what it told when he lifted a stray wisp of hair off the nape of her neck and tucked it back into her bun.

Losing the preacher had been eating him bad that night, curled up in the corner with the bottle. It weren't till she'd taken both his hands and squeezed that he'd raised his shaggy head to look in her face, and his eyes had been red in their sockets. She hadn't minded the whisky, since he'd held her all the tighter to steady himself, and he'd willingly repeated all the gallant nonsense she told him to say. He'd even kissed her curled hand before bidding her goodnight, and that had taken her by surprise. She'd lain awake with the memory of it, nights since - and thinking of it now she leaned a little harder into the table's edge, and wondered if there were any chance he'd like to examine her spine from the front side as well.

Doc in the here-and-now interrupted her thoughts.

"Do you know anything of the circumstances of your birth?"

"They said at the orphanage my Ma must've tried to smother me, and didn't finish the job." She spoke without bitterness - it was the true that they'd said it, and likely true in itself as well - but her words froze his hands on the shoulders. There was silence behind her back for what felt an age, and then he pulled her round about to face him. His mouth was compressed into a thin, stubborn line, but his eyes were mild and sad.

"It's my belief you were deprived of oxygen for a short time at birth, probably due to a difficult labour. That the asphixia damaged the part of your brain that governs voluntary movement - but only that part---" Jewel tilted forward and kissed him. When he pulled herself away, Doc's eyes were swimming behind the wire-rimmed glasses.

"Voluntary movement," Jewel said, then suddenly blinked hard. A moment later, she felt a moustache brush each squeezed-shut eyelid. Opening them (why was it so hard to do so? she'd never shirked from looking anyone in the face before), she saw that Doc's eyes were still wider, this time at his own boldness.

"I think," he began, "I'll have that tea --" His tangled hair fell around her face as she tilted it to his. Jewel clutched him as tight as ever she held a tray or a broom, and stopped his chat with her lips. Cradling her shoulderblades in one arm and curling the other about her waist, he pressed back with equal frenzy – surely neither one of them was going to come away from this without bruises; the watch chain on his shabby black silk vest dug into her ribs, which were no better padded than his, but she didn't care.

Upstairs, Al had determined he would not give that limping slut the satisfaction of hearing him inquire, even in the harshest terms, as to the fucking reason for the lateness of his tea. Given that her hearing had been completely spared by the Almighty's otherwise cruelly humorous act in creating her, he even restrained himself from getting up from his desk and pacing the room, instead venting his feelings in a torrential undertone of curses.

"I'm getting a bell, that's it, a brazen fucking bell, since that's apparently the only way I can fucking make my wishes known to my household."

"What's the gimp up to," he muttered, "is the question that perturbs me." A staggering thought crossed his mind – then he laughed, not at the improbability but the possibility – after all, no one knew better than Al the infinite tastes in fucking among the hoopleheads:

"Has she finally found herself a specialist?"


	3. Chapter 3

Blue eyes peering over glasses. "Thanks for the hospitality, Jewel. Day I've had, I'd almost forgotten how it felt to have food in me." The week had led off with Johnny suffering a knife wound through the hand while tending bar; and his attacker suffering multiple cuts and bruises, a broken wrist and a dislocated shoulder while being escorted from the premises by Dan. Moreover, the mercury having fallen hard a few days previous, Deadwood had an extra barrage of chills and rheumatic attacks for Doc to see to. A half-dozen miners, recently arrived and very green, had suffered hypothermia; another two were actually green, having eaten badly-tinned food.

At Doc's weekly inspection of the Bella Union, Con Stapleton had presented with a worrying rash that had unexpectedly turned out to be poison oak. While trying to recall whether he'd _ever_ even seen any poison oak growing in the Black Hills, Doc had given him some calamine lotion, shuddered, and made a mental note to keep an eye out for anyone with a corresponding rash.

"Now, by what remarkable chain of events do you suppose _that_ could have happened? I must say I am relieved the gentleman was not worse hurt, though he did pay for his room in advance." The mayor of Deadwood and owner of the Hotel Grand Central had never been one of Doc Cochran's favourite people, but he was being more than usually irksome. Doc did his best to shut out Farnum's voice as bent over the guest who'd been found half-strangled in his room. The man was conscious but the bruising on his throat would leave him unable to talk for a few days. Farnum was evidently trying to cover the resultant shortfall in conversation:  
"A traveller in hosiery accidentally loops one of his samples about his own neck, and the other end gets caught in the clasp of his case, which then falls off the end of his bed, strangling him. Why if Richardson hadn't taken curious when he didn't answer, the man might have met his doom. I would like to assure you," Farnum added to no one in particular, "that such a wondrous accident has never before to my knowledge occurred in this hotel." Doc made no answer, but when the mayor tried to direct the conversation towards his own health complaints he finally stood up and chased him bodily out of the room with curses. The hotel-keeper retreated as though he were used to inspiring this reaction in his fellow-man.  
Returning to his patient, Doc drew up a chair by the bed and seating himself, contemplated the traveller for a few minutes. He was not an especially memorable individual; neither old nor young, neither thin nor fat, he had likely passed through a thousand hotels in the course of his business without exciting any particular attention.  
"Mr. Calder. I know you can't talk right now. Probably hurts to move your head, too; so I'll ask you to look up for 'yes' and look down for 'no.' Do you understand me?" The commercial traveller rolled his eyes heavenward. Yes, then; possibly a rather sardonic yes.  
"Now, I noticed that case of yours had your shoes and toiletries piled into it; also the inkstand from the desk. Was that to weight it?"  
_Yes. _  
"Did you set up this contraption on purpose to choke yourself?" Mr. Calder stared straight ahead for a while. Then his eyes flicked briefly upward.  
_Yes._  
"Attend to my reasoning. This bedstead, though higher than most, is not a long drop; that silk stocking is not a rope; is harder to come by than rope. The material is soft and elastic. Suicide was therefore not your intention. Am I correct in my conclusion?" Another long pause.  
_Yes. _  
"You derive pleasure from the sensation of being choked, and on this occasion you miscalculated."  
_Yes._ Doc gazed silently at his patient again.  
"I don't know what to recommend to you," he said at last.


	4. Chapter 4

Calder would recover in a few days, but sooner than not, another accident would happen. Wondering what more he could have said, or done, Doc had packed his bag and was heading for the stairs when Mrs. Garret intercepted him.  
"It's probably of no importance," she began, but "I don't wish to take any risks when they might be avoided." Doc, still pondering the commercial traveller's situation, looked up in some alarm.  
"You...are unwell?"  
"No, I am well, sir. Sofia has taken a chill, with cough. I would much appreciate if, while you are here, you would examine her; to reassure me that she is not in danger."  
It was near dusk by now and Sofia was sitting up in bed, lamplight reflecting on her pale hair as she pored over a storybook. She looked up as the doctor approached.  
"Hello," she said, in a small voice, a little raspy with cough.  
"You're more conversational than last time we met," he observed as he turned up the lamp. "Stick out your tongue, honey." They made faces at one another. Her tongue was not coated. Cochran felt Sofia's forehead, listened to her chest. He allowed as how the berry tea would do her no harm, and would likely soothe her throat. He prescribed rest through the following day, and nodded towards the book when she looked disappointed at having to stay in bed. She was a tough little girl, had already survived worse things.

There was a distant yelp from the direction of the kitchen as Doc was once again making for the stairs. Before he could investigate, Farnum came hurrying out towards him. Cochran had never yet met anyone who could cringe while running, but the hotelier managed it:  
"Sir! There has occurred an accident to my employee. Not the most skilled of laborers, or indeed of creatures in general, but my employee still. Would you delay your departure long enough to examine the unfortunate wretch?" Through the swinging door, Doc could see Farnum's cook and factotum - what was his name? Richardson - clutching his wrist and whimpering by the stove. He tensed visibly at the approach of the doctor, and his bearded face split in a grin of plain fear.  
"He's here for your benefit, you ungrateful heathen," Farnum snapped. "Let him look at yer."  
"It's all right, Richardson." Recalling that the last time the little man had seen him was in the vaccination tent, Cochran spoke as softly as he could. "What happened to you?" Rheumy eyes looked upwards at the doctor, and it suddenly struck him that he towered over both these two goblin-like figures.  
"I was breaking an egg and I burnt myself."  
Doc began to feel he had fallen into one of the topsy-turvy fairy tales Sofia had been reading.  
"You burnt yourself...on a broken egg?"  
"If I may translate from Richardson into English," Farnum interrupted, "He was making coffee."  
"I needed to put an egg in, and I broke it against the pot."  
"It mellows and clarifies the brew - we take pride in our coffee at the Hotel Grand Central."  
"I have the picture. You may return to your desk in the lobby, Mr. Farnum."

The burn was not very severe. As Cochran hunted through his bag for the jar of salve, Richardson did a curious thing: reaching into his jacket with his uninjured hand, he drew forth a small antler and clutched it, eyes tightly closed, while the doctor swabbed and bandaged his hand.  
"Have you ever heard of the Irish elk?"  
"No."  
"Kind of deer that lived in Europe, a long time ago. They stood seven feet high at the shoulder. Antlers twelve feet across." Richardson opened his eyes at the description.  
"Is that bigger than the horns here?"  
"Much bigger. They're gone now, but sometimes someone finds their bones."  
"And their horns, too?"  
"The horns, too."

Cochran left Richardson gazing at the antler, dreaming of Irish elk no doubt, and went to tell Farnum he was going to have to do the cooking himself for a day; from there, he hoped, he could make his escape from the Hotel Grand Central before any more patients could waylay him. Even before reaching the lobby, however, he heard Farnum speaking defensively and recognized the voice in argument with him. He steepened his pace. Jewel turned to him as he entered:  
"Doc, I've been waiting for you. Johnny's sick and his hand's getting worse." She turned to snap triumphantly at Farnum across the desk, but Doc had already taken her arm and was walking her out the front door and back across the muddy thoroughfare, leaving Farnum behind his desk and, for once, deprived of his powers of expression.  
"Feverish?"  
"I think so. We ain't got a thermometer."

* * * * *


	5. Chapter 5

Johnny was shivering on one of the upstairs beds; the dressing on his hand was stained. Dan had waved them up without comment, but a pathetic mixture of hope and concern had flickered across his face. Doc reflected that a scarce few months earlier, he'd had to stand with a gun between the big man and little Sofia. Topsy-turvy.  
"When did you start feeling ill?" The bandage stank. More than it should.  
"Few hours ago."  
"Have you been keeping the dressing clean like I told you?" Johnny nodded and grimaced.  
"Changed it early this morning, before I helped Jewel empty the chamber pots." Doc was about to yell, sighed instead. It wasn't Johnny's fault he'd a cranium stuffed with cotton-wool.  
"Were there any...spills, while you cleaned up?"  
"Sure, but I mopped up. Always do. Doc, I'm so cold." Cochran winced at the words, and focussed on the wounded hand. Red streaks had started to travel up Johnny's arm, but the lymph-nodes in the armpit were not yet swollen; no sight or smell of gangrene, thank God, and his bag still had plenty of iodine.  
"Jewel - boil some water, will ya?"

An hour-and-a-half later: the wound soaked in disinfectant solution, opened, drained and cleaned, re-soaked, dried and re-bandaged; Johnny given water to drink and wet compresses on his head. All that remained, the doc told Al out of Johnny or Dan's hearing, was to wait out the night and see if any of it had helped, or if the sepsis would kill him. Al grimaced.  
"Who is going to do this waiting?"  
"I will."  
"Come to my office when there's any change. Any fucking change at all." Doc watched him go and sank into the chair by the bed. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to find an angle at which to sit that would lessen the ache between his shoulder blades. Eventually he gave up; couldn't let himself get comfortable anyway, or he might fall asleep. Johnny was asleep now, intermittently at least. The compresses had brought his fever down a little. The drunken shouts from downstairs quietened down, and a little later, so did the drunken shouts from the street outside.  
Doc wasn't sure why he was heading down to the lobby, but it seemed to him that stairs were a quite unnecessary invention when one could swoop. To hell with the fellow who invented them. He didn't much like the looks of the floor either, so he kept gliding until he lit on the bar's brass rail. Al, his antlers a full twelve feet across, looked up from the glass he was polishing.  
"How long," he asked, "until you come in here and give us your famous imitation of a human being?" He jabbed an index finger at a motto written on the bar in tiny gold letters.  
"You know my eyes aren't what they were," Doc protested, but he squinted at the letters until they became words:

**DO NOT SPIT ON THE FLOOR. ALSO, SHE'S IN THE ROOM. REALLY. YOU SHOULD LOOK UP NOW.**

Doc raised his head with a start and found himself back in the chair beside Johnny's bed. Jewel had her hand on his shoulder, while behind her the lamp was still burning. Everything in the room seemed very small and far away, somehow.  
"I think it's working, Doc." The lad's forehead was still warm, but his pulse was slower and steadier, and he nodded silently to Jewel. "Now _you_ need to take some supper, and I'll sit up with you."  
"It's too late for supper." Absurdly, he found himself arguing, though she was right - how long had it been since he'd eaten last? He dimly recalled some kind of stew from what was now the previous day.  
"Early breakfast, then. Either way, you get coffee." She took the tray from atop a dresser and thrust it towards him. He tried to stand and his head swam; he was afraid for a moment he was going to start falling again, and then perhaps resume his argument with Al, but he hung on to the knob of the near-side bedpost until his vision cleared and Jewel reappeared through the fog, still holding the breakfast-tray.  
"Doc?!"  
"It's all right." He seated himself cautiously on the edge of the bed, reached up to take the tray and motioned her to sit on the vacant chair. "Thank you."

With toast and eggs in him (he hadn't been able to touch the bacon, knowing as he did where it likely came from) Doc felt a bit warmer and more solid.  
"I'll be back for the coffee as soon as I tell Al the fever's easing."  
Al looked as though he'd been staring at the walls of his office all night. Doc felt a twinge of sympathy for him, though as usual he betrayed nothing upon receiving the news that Johnny was doing better:  
"Why am I still fucking awake, then?" he asked simply, and headed for his own room before Cochran could think of a suitable answer. Perhaps there was none, the doctor told himself as he returned to keep vigil with Jewel. He sipped the coffee gratefully and remembered something.  
"Do you put eggs in it?"  
"Just the whites." He had to admit it tasted pretty good.  
"If I nod off again, jes' kick me in the shins ."  
"I'd rather kiss you."  
"That's not much of a dissuasion."  
"But wouldn't you rather be awake when I do it?" Fighting to keep his eyes open, he reached across and took her hand.  
"I concede to your argument."  
"Good." A minute passed in silence. Doc set the coffee down carefully and turned to check Johnny. He was sleeping peacefully, and his forehead was cool.  
"He'll be all right now." God, but he was tired. He should go back to his cabin, get an hour's rest before he was needed again.

"Will you stay a little longer? Just in case?"  
"Till sun-up." Squeeze her hand.

"Doc?" He _had_ nodded off, but Jewel neither kicked him in the shins nor kissed him. Instead she sat watching as the dawn reached across the room to touch his greying hair.


	6. Chapter 6

Bath day, Jewel's turn came after the other females, who were now resetting their curls in the adjoining room. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of cologne and singed hair as she threw an indifferent glance downward at her skinny, soapy body. Small breasts, like peaches - but more canned than fresh, she thought, and smiled wryly. She was unsure of her exact age, but she knew herself to be nearly as old as Al, and therefore nearly as old as Doc, though he must have had a very different life. She splashed thoughtfully in the tepid water.  
Dolly had had the tub last, and stood nearby, still toweling off her ample curves. As the housekeeper watched, she raised her pink arms over her head and pulled on her shift, tugging and smoothing it where it clung to her heavy breasts and hips. It was nothing she hadn't seen before, but the shift was what interested her - not at all new, it had been very neatly mended in places. The big girl had a delicate touch, and Jewel began wondering if she could be persuaded to sew up the ripped shoulder in her dress. She would of a certainty do it for a bribe of jam - but Doc had cautioned her tartly last week, within Jewel's hearing, as to the harm she would do her teeth with too many sweet things; and the cook had no wish to make trouble for Dolly, who was an amiable enough creature. Even now, catching sight of Jewel gawking at her, she took it for a gentle rebuke:  
"I'm sorry Jewel, my mind was wandering." She helped the other woman from the tin tub and handed her the towel. Jewel pulled it tight around her shivering form and rubbed herself dry.  
"Gotta get Johnny to put some more wood on," she gasped.  
"Al won't like that," Dolly offered uncertainly.  
"Al won't like the girls shivering either." Dolly giggled at the pert response. "What you're wearing wouldn't keep a flea warm," Jewel added. She crinkled her face slyly: "Looks real pretty, though."  
"It's just an old nightie. I've mended it a dozen times an' all."  
"You do a good job mending. I can hardly see the stitches." Blushing improbably at this praise, Dolly seemed about to answer, when Dan put his shaggy head through the door. "Dan, the sign says 'Get the Hell Out,'" Jewel snapped. The conversation had been going in such a promising direction.  
"Sorry to create a disturbance in such a fuckin' respectable place, but just now it's a fuckin' respectable place with no pussy on display downstairs. Y'know, the place where the paying customers are?"  
"Don't yell at us, Dolly's just goin'. And you leave and let me dress, I'm not cooking supper in the altogether."  
"Heaven is merciful."  
"Would cost the hooples extra, anyway." Left alone, she dropped the towel to the nearby couch and began picking up her things and pulling them on: single skimpy petticoat, waist, calico dress (nearly putting her arm through the tear in the shoulder) and the sturdy apron that tied it all together. Finally she pulled on her boot, and wished again that Dan hadn't sent Dolly down so quick; her clever fingers would have been a help with the straps.  
When she'd got it on and teetered carefully down the stairs she took the trouble to stomp primly as she passed Dan at the bar.  
"What's with the fuckin' gimp of late?" the big man muttered to himself. Johnny took the comment as a genuine query:  
"Aw, she's just happy she's not a gimp any more."  
"Still don't make her the goddamn Queen of Sheba."  
"An' Doc's comin' round for inspection tomorrow," Johnny added.  
"Why should that have any effect upon her spirits?"  
"Well, she's sweet on Doc, ain't she?"  
Dan wheeled to gape at him.  
"Why the hell would - where do you pull your information from and in what universe does it make any kind of fucking sense?" Customers were beginning to be impatient that their glasses were not yet refilled and he scowled at them, but glancing towards the upper level he grudgingly slopped the liquor into two glasses and sent them on their way before turning back to stare at Johnny.  
"They were sitting by my bed when I was sick an' they thought I was asleep," the young man shrugged.  
"You were goddamn delirious, Johnny. Whatever you thought you saw or heard was a fever dream."  
"You think so, Dan?" Johnny began to sound uncertain. Dan paused and looked about the room. The customers had gone back to the gaming tables, or were fondling the wares on display. For the time being, all was going well.  
"So," he asked, "What _did_ you think you saw and heard?"


	7. Chapter 7

Breakfast: Corn bread, cold bread, stew, boiled eggs.  
Dinner: Soup, cold boiled leg of mutton, calves' head, vegetables.  
Dessert: English plum pudding, hard sauce.  
Tea: Corn bread, cold bread, stewed oysters.  
_And we will have it or perish._

The Gem never perished, of course. With all the money they made off pussy, they could afford to bring in the luxuries that whet the appetite for pussy, set it off to best effect; which is what made all the difference, really; otherwise the hooples could have dug holes in the ground, fucked the holes, and saved their gold; and then Al would have had to make all his profits off whiskey and gambling alone. He was lucky to have Jewel, who could cook well, and in quantity: in addition to the regular meals, fried oysters and hard-boiled eggs had to be available at all hours: Saloon-keepers from San Francisco to Timbuktu know salty things make the customers thirsty.  
She'd told Dan she was going to make supper, but it was more a question of assembling it and then setting up the campaign to prepare the next meal. The soup had been on since early morn; the roast had gone in just before she'd drawn the baths; and the boiled mutton and pudding had been readied the day before. The vegetables still had to be cooked and the pudding warmed. Oppressive in summer, the kitchen's heat was a cheerful thing as the winter drew on; more importantly, it was Jewel's own bailiwick - not even Al would have dared to gainsay her on the topic of cookery; indeed he had seldom even broached the subject, saving only the time before the meeting against the plague - no, the smallpox - when he had declared canned fruit would be served with the coffee. He had never rescinded that order; nor had she.  
With her right hand wrapped round the knife handle, Jewel could chop accurately if uncomfortably. The vegetables were not frenchified here, cut so fine you could hardly taste them. Men who, in their former lives, would have sneered at greens and roots as food for cattle came into camp craving them after weeks of nothing but game and whatever baking they could manage to do on their own. Eggs, too, and sweets. Sweets. She frowned, thinking about how to start working on Dolly again, if she ever got the chance; Al kept the fat girl so busy exercising her other skills.

She hummed to herself as she chopped: S'pose Doc must do his own mending; wonder if he uses the self-same thread he does to stitch up wounds. It's been well-worn, but his suit's always buttoned up and fits neat on his slight frame.  
This pleasant train of thought was interrupted by a sudden vocal barrage:  
"I called for an omelette! Where is my Arrmlett! Is yer cunt of a cook asleep?!" Sounds from the barroom suggested a bear was fighting a bull moose in the pit of a theatre orchestra, and presently a heavy body slammed its way through the panels of the kitchen door. Unsure if this ingress was voluntary or not, Jewel turned to the intruder so he could see the knife clutched in her fist, and glared at him with all the defiant intensity of an alley-cat facing down a large dog.  
"I'm fixing supper. You can wait for yer omlette, and like it."  
The omelette-fancier (for she supposed him to have been the source of the shouting) roared curses at her, but he was losing coherence rapidly. His voice was breathy and thick, his face and throat beginning to swell with bruises as well as liquor and choler; Dan must already have softened him up a bit. He was steadying himself against the kitchen table - her table - and she hoped he was become too bleary to assess the pots and pans as potential weaponry and well within reach of his long, ropy arm. The shine of her knife, however, held his gaze. He swayed, and gave a lurch toward her, but caught the table again as she showed him the point of the blade.  
The movement of blood in her veins was beginning to sound very loud to Jewel; it drowned out any other sound. So it was that when an arm shot over the hoople's shoulder and grappled onto his heavy neck, she almost shared his abrupt loss of consciousness.  
"Dan! What took you?"  
"Sorry, Jewel," Dan gasped as he lugged the man to the door and kicked him out. "Was aiming for the wall, an' I threw the cocksucker into the kitchen. You all right?"  
"I'm fine, but supper'll be another ten minutes now." Bright inspiration struck: "And he put a friggin' great tear in my frock. Think Dolly could fix it?"


	8. Chapter 8

Dan was hovering in the kitchen doorway, and Jewel, looking up from the chopping block, eyed him suspiciously.  
"Why're you lookin' at me like that?" The big man shuffled uncertainly.  
"Just worried I guess. I did throw an angry cocksucker through your kitchen door."  
"I noticed."  
"He might've hurt you, and I'm sorry."  
"It's awright, Dan."  
"You're a good woman, Jewel."  
"What're you talkin' about?"  
"Nothin'."  
"Well, let me get back to work, then." Puzzled, she bent over her knife again. It wasn't like Dan to fuss. She was chopping onions now, and blinked frequently as they stung her eyes - perhaps he'd thought she was weeping with fright. Men.

* * * * *

Voices from an upper room babbled through cracks in the floor and dissolved into the piano's tinkle:

_"Don't pick at that. Inspection's tomorrow, you can ask the doc to look at it."  
"I tried feelin' him up once - jes' for laughs, y'know?"  
"And?"  
"He told me to get the hell off his prick. But not in a resentful way."  
"You were probably too warm for him."  
"What's that s'posed to mean?"  
"Well, they do say he's a convicted grave-robber."  
"Why d'you have to go and say a thing like that for? Doc's awright."  
"He's got an odd face. Eyes like two piss-holes in the snow."_

* * * * *

There was knock on the kitchen door, and she opened it to a blast of frigid air, and Trixie.  
"Get in here before you turn blue. Why'd you go out straight after a bath? Catch your death, you will." Clutching her shawl about her, Trixie was blowing on her cold hands, and she accepted the tin mug the scolding cook pressed upon her.  
"Been with the Widow Garrett at the hotel," she began, when the coffee had thawed her enough to talk.  
"How's the little squarehead girl?" The whore's face lit up:  
"Oh, Jewel, she is that pretty, she's like a wax doll. Don't talk much yet, but you can see by her smile she understands."  
"Is she well? I found Doc there 'tother day when Johnny was sick, and he said she was one o'the cases."  
"Over her cold and up and about. She's a strong little'un - 'tis the widow needs taking care of, much of the time."  
"Does Doc take care of her too?" Jewel could not keep a faint note of jealousy from her voice, and Trixie smiled.  
"She's half-afraid of him, if you ask me."  
"Why?"  
"Well if he don't speak about it I got no call to be telling you." Too astonished to argue with this point-blank refusal, Jewel asked:  
"But how could any be afraid o' the likes of him?" Trixie sighed.  
"It's different for ones like her - they ain't s'posed to ever let on they're discomfited, so doctors are apt to make them feel shamed of themselves. And Doc can't manage to be fuckin' mealymouthed with people he thinks are being fools. Probably why he's out here and not running a respectable practice. How are things twixt you and him anyways?"  
"Awright. We've kissed a little. He smells of camphor and sawdust, but I like it."

_Doc's spectacles had slid down his pointed nose, leaving his eyes unguarded, luminous and wondering. His hair wanted cutting, and the lock that always managed to fall in his eyes clung damply to his broad forehead. Stubble rasped beneath her fingers as she stroked his pale, sharp jaw; she leaned into his mouth and moustache, biting his lower lip gently. With a gasp, he pressed back willingly, even desperately...._

* * * * *

At the bar, Dan had finally found time to winkle an account out of Johnny of what he had seen, or imagined; only to be reminded to his dismay that description was not the younger man's strong suit: "They were holdin' hands, talkin' to each other. 'Bout kissing."  
"And did they?"  
"No, but --" Johnny hesitated, unable to convey an impression scarcely remembered, that the tired people sitting by his bedside had been puppets that moved by the same string; or perhaps, their worn bodies a mere show, they _were_ the string.


	9. Chapter 9

When Jewel had asked him to dance, the night Reverend Smith had... the night the cavalry had left town, Doc told himself he had been too drunk, too distraught to resist her.

When she had kissed him, the afternoon he was examining her leg brace, he told himself he had been caught off guard, and had kissed back out of sheer surprise.

When she had squeezed his hand, drawn him under the Gem staircase, and insisted he unbutton her blouse, he had wondered as he did so why he continued to acquiesce - was he humoring her? Relieved someone was giving him instructions for a change? She had smelled of yellow soap, of varnish and beeswax. Perhaps, he had thought, as he bent his head over her shoulder and placed a slightly-out-of-practice kiss in the hollow of her collarbone, it was a relief to step away from himself for a moment; to play at being young and wicked for a few moments, until one of them would hear a footstep, or breakfast would need cooking, and she'd shoo him away with a last peck on the cheek. At least she was less danger to his liver than his usual source of consolation.

* * * *

It was over two months before he could bring himself to admit she had become a constant presence in his mind.  
"I see things when I'm out and about," he told her one day, "and I always wonder 'what would Jewel say to that?' Just as though you were a little bird perched on my shoulder."  
"I'd like to be a little bird."  
"Your human guise is not without its charms. Birds don't have waists. Or lips, or pretty hair…." His memory dredged up phrases he hadn't spoken out loud in decades. Chickabiddy. Cute as a bug's ear. When he went home, however, the endearments vanished among the medical clutter of his tiny cabin as he looked more soberly at the situation: knowing it to be a natural human feeling did not make him feel any less foolish; he had hoped he would be past any such puppyish nonsense at his age. He could, however, take responsibility for his own thoughts and actions – what frightened him to the core was the idea that his mere existence might be a condition of someone else's happiness. It seemed to him a terrible load to bear.  
When drink proved unable to drive thought away (as it always did); he reverted to his original method of dealing with his woes; taking them apart and analyzing them. Though he'd never been much for the conventions of courtship, he felt obscurely he was wronging one who despite her handicap was in sound enough health and would likely outlive him. Well, he told himself, he was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch - if thus far, he'd been able to resist putting himself in the ground, he could resist putting himself...elsewhere.

* * * *

"My past is a nightmare; my present practice is one in which, despite my poor efforts, death is in any situation a likely outcome - often the very likeliest. I cannot imagine my future will be any different. I am long since resigned to spending my days in that cold shadow, but I would not have it fall upon so warm a heart as your own - as it invariably will if you pursue this connexion."  
"Are you sayin' I'm too good for you?"  
"I'm sayin' I'm not fit for human companionship. _And_ that you're too good for me."  
"You're the only one would think that. And you're the only one I want to fuck. Now, I call that a coincidence. When are we going to?" Jewel added. "It's awright, I've done it before. But I'd like it better with you."

In a dim pantry that smelled of smoke, too-green wood, and molasses; with a woman wearing a leg brace and a faded calico dress; who whispered in a soft, slurred voice while her eyes looked bright as a bird's into his: Doc's resolve on this point finally melted; and melted like ice on a pent-up river. He cleared his throat.

"Do you have a... preferred position?" When her answer was to throw her arms about his neck, he tapped the lowest pantry shelf experimentally, then picking her up, he seated her upon it. Her expression brightened and she tugged awkwardly at her skirts, eventually bunching them across her lap as he stepped between her bared knees and curled an arm around her waist to place his hand between the small of her back and the wood of the cupboard behind her. "Now, please tell me if you're uncomfortable --" he began; she put her hand gently but firmly against his mouth.  
"Shh," she cooed. "I'm awright, Doc, really. Please, let's just do it."

The skimpy petticoats she had hiked up were of calico too, worn to soft tatters and warmed by constant contact with thighs as pale as the unbleached cloth. He reached to move the skirts up a bit higher and shivered with a long-forgotten pleasure as his fingertips encountered curled hair. Jewel trembled, too, at the touch.  
"Yes," she whispered. "Like that." As if by instinct (or not - she had after all indicated she was not without experience) she crossed her fists across his back and brought her knees closer to grip him, though her weaker leg could not press so hard against his body as the other. Nonetheless, he took it that she desired more pressure on the spot and did his best to provide it.  
Meantime, their mouths had locked themselves together, until the force of their osculations almost brought their front teeth into contact. Instead, he tried nibbling delicately on her tongue when it stole forth to touch his. His hair fell over her closed eyes, and he broke the vacuum of their lips long enough to rub cheeks, noses, before withdrawing his hand to hastily undo buttons.  
"If you could," he whispered, "just tilt your hips a bit forward and upwards. Yes. Like that." Astounding it was that so frail-seeming a bundle of humanity could be so warm to the touch. Heat fairly radiated though the back and shoulder-blades, the shallow chest and small, tense belly. She gasped. After that, it was mostly gasps, their mouths open, ecstatic, while the part of Doc's mind that was still aware of the universe outside their conjoined bodies prayed that the pantry shelves were as stable as he had thought and wouldn't tip forward with their rocking.

* * * *

"Are you all right sitting there? This ain't exactly the softest spot in the Gem." They were curled up against the cupboard's lower door, two exhausted bodies with hearts temporarily at peace.  
"Though not so young as I was, my career has left me able to make myself tolerably comfortable just about any position." He leant back into the corner. "Besides," he nuzzled the top of Jewel's head, "You look so contented in the crook of my arm, I cannot fail to distill from yours some comfort of my own." Jewel peered into his flushed face, and gingerly smoothed a damp lock of hair off his forehead.  
"Was I good?" He nodded wordlessly and she continued gazing at him. "You've got eyes like you swallowed the moon."  
"Well," he murmured into the hollow of her neck, "you did serve it to me."

_The End_


End file.
